Uncategorized Archives

Guest Post: Shouldn’t Business & Life Skills Complement Each Other? by Julie Morris

small business, Uncategorized / Rickey Gold

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash Americans spend one-third of their lives working – often more for entrepreneurs – and the distinction between our work and personal lives becomes more difficult to separate. You may not realize what you learn as a business owner may also apply to other aspects of your life, whether it’s […]

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A woman pointing to the 5th of 5 yellow stars to signify successful marketing.

5 reasons why you should add visuals to your marketing.

content marketing, creativity, email marketing, marketing, Uncategorized, web design, websites / Rickey Gold

We know that social media posts with visuals outperform text-only posts. But visuals enhance other forms of marketing as well. As visual creatures, we enjoy reading or skimming material which contains graphics and images. In fact, according to this post in Polls Everywhere, visuals increase the desire to read content by 80%. With a reach

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Smart small businesses come up with solutions.

clients, customer care, small business, Uncategorized / Rickey Gold

Many thanks to Lum3n for use of this Pexels image. A recent headline in the Wall Street Journal jumped out: Target Posts Record Quarter. Really? Month 6 of a pandemic. Life is anything but normal. Shops still closed. Restaurants going out of business. And Target can’t get out of their own way. What’s Target doing

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Supporting Our Small Business Colleagues & Friends

small business, Uncategorized / Rickey Gold

Every once in a while, I like to look back to what we were doing a year ago. In July 2019, life was radically different. We were busily blogging about branding. We also roamed freely in our cities and networked face-to-face. Summer was filled with beach time, boat rides, biking and concerts and festivals. A

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Photo of a deserted Rush Street in Chicago's Gold Coast with boarded up windows during the pandemic.

The Summer of 2020

Uncategorized / Rickey Gold

4 months into the Coronavirus nightmare. 15 days since the murder of George Floyd. Our slated blog post for June seems trivial and irrelevant at the moment. Our world has changed in ways we never dreamt possible. None of the sci-fi disaster films could’ve prepared us for life in America in the summer of 2020.

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20 Ways to Jumpstart 2020

small business, Uncategorized / Rickey Gold

A new decade dawning. Does it feel newer than a regular old middle-of-the-decade new year? Probably not. But why not use it for what it is – a beginning — the start of a calendar year. And as good a time as any to think about how you can jumpstart your business. Based on our

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Tired woman laying her head on conference table while 2 other employees look perplexed.

Why your presentations suck and what to do about that.

marketing, presentations, Uncategorized / Rickey Gold

Ever wonder how effective your PowerPoint presentations are? What if you discover that the format you’ve been using is all wrong? Inc Magazine recently published an intriguing article by Geoffrey James claiming that PowerPoint is “worse than useless”. Note: the link above is not broken. And it’s a good article. It brings to mind a presentation

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Are you wasting your time sending emails?

email marketing, marketing, Uncategorized / Rickey Gold

You’ve decided it’s time to do an email campaign. So you buy a list, craft what you believe to be a good email letter and send it out. But when you look at the stats, you’re less than thrilled. Minimal opens. A lousy click through rate. ZERO conversions. What happened? Let’s look at some possibilities:

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4 Top Tips to Better Content

marketing morsels, Uncategorized / Rickey Gold

Today’s small business owner faces a big challenge. Digital noise surrounds us online — offers, freebies, surveys, endless articles. Getting your content read is more and more difficult. What can you do to make sure people see and share your content? Here are 4 easy tips to make that happen: Focus on the benefit. How

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when startups fail

small business, Uncategorized / Rickey Gold

Jumping on the startup bandwagon is not for everyone. It’s certainly not for the risk-averse. Because starting a business is a bad idea if you’re not able to accept failure. It’s also not for someone who can’t develop or follow a plan. Startups need structure. Processes and procedures don’t just happen. They need to be

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